Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2007 Category 1: Austria
• Easy access to stored data;
• Easier administration of different versions of documents;
• Implementation of a uniform layout;
• Support to legislative bodies; and
• Official and authentic publication in electronic form only.
eLaw supports the following types of bills: Federal Law, Regulation by Minister,
Regulation by Cabinet, Governmental Announcement and International Treaty. The
entire legislative process is planned and realized as a whole in electronic form, allowing
for a smooth transmission of data files from one organisation to the next without
any media disruption; parallel processing by several organisations at once was also
made possible.
The legislative process is split into different workflow sub-processes. The main procedures
of the workflow are:
• Preparation of a bill;
• Evaluation procedure;
• Presentation to the Council of Ministers;
• Government bill;
• Process in parliament (independent system);
• Decision of Parliament;
• Authentication of the Act by the Federal President and counter-signature
by the Federal Chancellor; and
• Official electronic promulgation on the Austrian Legal Information System
(RIS), (www.bka.gv.at).
In a database, called a document pool, all relevant documents are stored and can be
easily accessed. The necessary metadata for documentation and searching has to be
recorded. In the parliament, an autonomous IT-system is used. Every bill has to be
transferred from the Federal Chancellery (BKA) to the parliament and – after parliament’s
decision – back to BKA. This transfer is facilitated by an open, XML-based
interface and a secure connection. Following the parliamentary decision, the bill is
further processed in the eLaw system and – in case of successful completion – promulgated
on the Austrian Legal Information System. Use of the eLaw system is restricted
to civil servants of the federal ministries only. However, the general public
has access to the draft bills, the government bills and to the Austrian Legal Information
System free of charge.
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